Slave #Britain: Voting in the general election is important if you want change (#ids #welfare #atos)

Back in October, Russell Brand caused a bit of a stir in the media by encouraging people not to vote at the next general election in 2015.

After hearing his remarks, we wondered what would happen if all of the candidates in the election received zero votes. Would not voting change anything or dissolve our current political system?

The short answer is that it would not change a thing, and could make the next government a worse entity to tolerate than the current one.

This is a hypothetical argument anyway. It is highly unlikely that no one in the country would vote. It would be an opportunity for party supporters and donors to rally round their candidate and they would have a very good idea of whether they were likely to win the election or not, and where they would be able to gain seats. No doubt, MPs would vote for other candidates of the same party they are in, and businesses would vote for the party members they know will look after the business’ interests.

But, hypothetically, if no one voted there is already a system in place to cope with such eventualities.

Voting is counted in constituencies, so each constituency would implement a ‘name out of the hat’ system where all of the candidates’ names are put into a hat and one is drawn by the returning officer to be the winner.

After the winners in each constituency is drawn, the total number of seats for each party would be totalled. If there was no majority, the Queen would then call on the person who she thinks is most likely to form a stable government, regardless of the number of MPs from each party.

So not voting would cause more problems for the people of the UK than it is meant to solve, and it is highly likely that we would end up with the same bunch of monkeys we have in power today.

Voting IS important, and we should ALL make sure we have time to vote in the next election, even if we wouldn’t normally.

It is vital that each of us considers the candidates in our constituency very carefully, and be mindful of the effects of their party (if it is one of the major ones) getting into power. The days of voting for a candidate because they represented a party we historically supported are long gone, because they are all the same suits with different faces.

Traditional Labour voters know this all too well. The Labour party was turned into a branch of the Conservatives during Tony Blair’s reign of destruction, and no longer seems to represent the values of looking after the ‘ordinary man in the street’. It seems strange to hear members of the shadow Labour government agree with some of the devastating Conservative policies we have had to endure in recent times.

The Liberal Democrats has proved to be the most useless of the three main parties. Since becoming part of the coalition government, they appear to have totally abandoned their policies and manifesto, and allow the Conservatives to stomp all over them. Nick Clegg has made very few (and very weak) gestures of protest – but nothing like he should have done based on the traditional values of the Liberal Democrats. In fact, the weak stance of the Liberal Democrats has resulted in several resignations from the party by MPs.

Without doubt, the party who has shown their true colours has been the Conservatives. They don’t care about the citizens of the UK and are only looking after themselves and their cronies. There are so many examples of this that is would take hundreds of pages to go through them all. They have lied, they have cheated, and they are as corrupt as hell. The only thing they have achieved is to destroy the fabric of our society and our country.

Not much choice between any of them really. And this is what we have to start thinking about. Leave behind the old notions of what each party stood for – because that is well and truly in the past – consigned to history books.

So who is left? Panic!!

Take a deep breath and think about it for a moment. There are other candidates in most constituencies, and perhaps in the next election there may be more as they see that the three main parties are losing supporters and making a mess of everything.

Another excuse that is often heard is that people vote for one of the major parties because other parties don’t stand a chance of getting in to Parliament. Well if people base their voting on that kind of attitude then of course they won’t stand a chance – pretty logical! That kind of thinking makes no sense at all.

All the candidates have equal chance – it all comes down to how many people vote for them. So if the majority start using their brains and vote for a candidate that is meaningful and not of the main three parties, they will become the constituencies MP and be in Parliament. If enough people do that around the country in each constituency, it will result in a wider range of representation of the UK population, and not become a farce based on the agenda of one party holding the majority.

A wider selection of representatives in Parliament will mean that all parties will have to start thinking in a very different way. Rather than hiding behind the support of their own party members, government ministers would have to justify themselves and their policies to a wider audience – they would no longer be able to expect automatic support or be safe in the knowledge that they can pass unpopular or stealth legislation – which has been the tactic of the current government.

Perhaps people worry that a government made up of MPs from a diverse range of political perspectives would be unworkable. Again, there is no reason this should not work – and may work much better than the enforced party agenda based system we have at the moment.

As with presenting policies to Parliament we covered earlier, any policies developed by the government would have to be based on mutual understandings and a diverse range of political perspectives. Members of government could no longer rely on just the support of their own party, and would have to justify their proposals and base them on what is good for the majority of the UK population, rather than their own niche circle of buddies.

Of course there will be difficulties, but with a diverse enough range of MPs considering policies the only majority decision that can be made must be based on what is the best course of action for the population – and not any particular party.

If government was formed in this way at each general election most of the inevitable problems of the first one or two government would be ironed out, and we may then be approaching something nearer to democracy rather than the fascist system of government that has developed today.

Your vote not only influences the way we are governed in the short term, but has significant implications for governments of the future.

If we allow (and it is us who allow) the domination of politics by a few main parties it is inevitable that nothing will get any better, and in fact, will get a lot worse as the main parties merge into one grey blob of corruption and fascism – which we are very close to now.

The more independent parties and candidates are also more likely to work harder for real values which matter – because that is what they are based on, and not be financially motivated as the main parties are.

When the general election comes to us in 2015, think about who you are going to vote for and break that old and outdated habitual behaviour of voting for the same party time and time again.

If you have never voted, you need to consider what impact your actions will have on every other citizen of the UK.

If there are no candidate you feel you can support – vote for the most obscure because it will take a vote away from the corrupt and self-serving parties that have dominated our political landscape for far too long.

I may seem a long way off, but it is good to start thinking about it now so you are prepared when the time comes.

This is one thing all of us of voting age can do which will start helping make real change come about – a change we have needed for a long time. If you have never done anything else to help change happen – VOTE!

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